Wife donates kidney to husband at Piedmont

by Louis Mayeux | Buckhead Patch

Drew media attention for wife's request for additional days off for surgery

A Henry County woman at the center of recent media attention donated a kidney to her husband in a transplant operation at Piedmont Hospital Thursday.

Piedmont spokesman Jim Taylor said the operation "went very well," and that the Van Sickles were in recovery Thursday.

Keri Van Sickle’s request for additional days off from the Henry County School system so that she could donate the kidney to her husband, J.D., was initially denied, drawing a flurry of media attention. But as reported in the Henry County Daily Herald, the school teacher's request was eventually approved, allowing the operation to proceed.

Van Sickle, a former Naval commander and retired Henry County schoolteacher, was in stage four renal failure, Taylor said. Keri Van Sickle, a Henry social studies teacher, was found to be a match for her husband and decided to become his living donor.

The Piedmont Transplant Institute has done about 816 living donor kidney transplants in 25 years of transplant services, Taylor said.

The couple is expected to return home early next week.

Organ donors are needed for the 3,317 people awaiting a transplant in Georgia, Taylor said.